Carrier route record
DLCMH→MSP
Delta Air Lines · Columbus to Minneapolis
- Flights
- 676
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 78%
- Carriers
- 2
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Delta Air Lines.
Delta on CMH to MSP earns an A+. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 9 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs a little over an hour. That rests on 676 flights, with a median arrival 13 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, Delta's CMH to MSP record is 9 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 86 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
85.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 669 completed flights
Avg delay
82 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.89%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
85.2%
Every carrier on CMH to MSP, 871 flights
These figures cover 676 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 13 minutes early, which is the part an average hides: most flights here are fine, and the on-time rate is decided by a tail of badly late ones. On-time means under 15 minutes late, the DOT's own threshold.
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Carrier by carrier
Delta against every carrier on CMH to MSP
Delta flew 676 of the 871 flights on CMH to MSP, most of the route. Its 85.9% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 85.2%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 85.9% to SkyWest at 82.5%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
Only one carrier clears this site's 365-flight floor here, so there is no comparison to draw. The table below is the full picture.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Air Lines (this page) | 676 | 85.9% | 82 min | 0.89% | A+ |
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 195 | 82.5% | 139 min | 0.51% | B+ |
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Departure window
When Delta runs best on this route
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 14 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am286 flights91.2%
- 8am–11am68 flights86.4%
- 11am–2pm144 flights81.8%
- 2pm–5pm83 flights83.1%
- 5pm–8pm70 flights76.8%
- 8pm–5am25 flights—
Scale runs 70% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 91.2% of the time, against 76.8% for the evening window. That is 14 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 286 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Delta on CMH to MSP through the year
August is the worst month at 76.1% on time, 24 points below April, the best at 100.0%. Summer afternoon convection and peak-season schedules land on the same weeks every year, so this is a pattern you can book around rather than a run of bad luck. July was the busiest month here, with 113 flights.
Across the week, Thursday is the strongest day at 90.1% on time and Monday the weakest at 78.6%, a spread of 12 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late Delta on CMH to MSP runs when it is late
Delta on CMH to MSP often beats the schedule: 306 of 669 completed flights, 46%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 94 late arrivals split 34 under half an hour, 23 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 37 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early306 flights45.7%
- Within 15 min269 flights40.2%
- 15–29 min late34 flights5.1%
- 30–59 min late23 flights3.4%
- 1–2 hours late13 flights1.9%
- 2+ hours late24 flights3.6%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 669 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
14 of 95 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 15% of them. Only 13 left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for Delta on CMH to MSP
The latest arrival of the period was on 8 November 2025, 7 hours 2 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as extreme weather. The five worst days are spread across November, August, June, May and September, with no single month standing out.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 8 November 2025 | 7 hours 2 minutes | Extreme weather |
| 11 August 2026 | 6 hours 57 minutes | Extreme weather |
| 30 June 2026 | 5 hours 31 minutes | Carrier |
| 23 May 2026 | 4 hours 37 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 5 September 2025 | 3 hours 49 minutes | Carrier |
Delay causes
Why Delta runs late on this route
Carrier accounts for 43% of the 7,666 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 43%Carrier
- 36%Late-arriving aircraft
- 13%Extreme weather
- 8%National Airspace System
Extreme weather accounts for 13% of delay minutes, well above the single-digit share typical across the system. Weather delays are lumpy: they arrive as whole bad days rather than as a steady drag, so the monthly strip above is the more useful view of the risk. The national share is 6%, so this operation carries roughly 2.2 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 7,666 reported delay minutes.
36% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 7,666 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 3 to one.
Cancellations are rare at 0.89%, below the national 1.89% and low enough to earn the plus on the grade. Roughly one flight in 100 is called off; the risk here is arriving late, not not arriving.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
5.5% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.3%, so a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last a little over an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 626 miles between these two airports put this in the middle of the US network, around two and a half to three hours of block time. That is enough cruise to absorb a ten-minute late pushback and not enough to absorb thirty.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 79.7% on time across 676 flights, 6 points below this direction. Departure banks, aircraft rotations and the congestion at each end all differ, so scoring the two directions together would average away a real 6 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 676 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor but not enough to pin the rate down tightly, and a single bad week moves it by more than a point. Treat the grade as a rough reading.
What to do with this
Booking Delta on CMH to MSP
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 676 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor and not enough to be confident to better than a couple of points. The 85.9% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 669 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- CMH to MSP, every carrier
- Delta on MSP to CMH, the return leg
- SkyWest Airlines on CMH to MSP82.5%
- Delta Air Lines network-wide record
- John Glenn Columbus International (CMH) delay statistics
- Minneapolis-St Paul International (MSP) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.